International role

---

Member of the Commission, Shelagh McCall, outlines the international role of the Commission in this short film.

---

SM: 

“Hello. I’m Shelagh McCall. I’m one of the part-time Commissioners with the Scottish Human Rights Commission.  

My background is in law and before I came to the Commission I was working for the United Nations as a prosecutor at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. But the creation of the Commission was a really exciting opportunity for me to come back and get involved in setting up an important institution like that.  

The Scottish Commission is one of over eighty national human rights institutions around the world and so far Scotland has appeared at the International Coordinating Committee of all those institutions that’s run by the United Nations and that gives Scotland a particular voice in that network. Recently in the conflict in Gaza, for example, the Scottish Human Rights Commission issued a statement in support of the national human rights institution in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. And that’s important for two reasons. First of all, because all the national institutions have agreed that when one of their number is under pressure in a difficult conflict situation, they will offer solidarity and support to them   And the second reason it’s important is because Scotland has expertise to offer that can help that commission become stronger, help the situation of human rights in Gaza by offering practical support and capacity building after the conflict and those sorts of things.  

The Commission’s involved in two current monitoring situations. First of all in relation to the Optional Protocol on the Convention Against Torture, the Commission has been appointed as part of a national monitoring mechanism in relation to that to make sure that throughout the United Kingdom, and in particular in Scotland that we meet the standards that are expected in relation to preventing torture, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The second role that the commission has internationally in monitoring international human rights standards is in relation to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

The international role of the Commission is important in the context of business and human rights because increasingly we see globalization, we see multinational corporations having an impact on the lives of people in individual countries. And where as in the past we would have looked to governments to uphold human rights and take responsibility for ensuring human rights standards are met, internationally now people are looking to more to how to ensure corporations don’t have an adverse impact on human rights.

The way the Scottish Human Rights Commission can help with that is to develop human rights impact assessments so that businesses have a tool that they can use when they go into different communities, both at home and abroad, to see what impact they are going to have on the local community and on the environment and make sure they minimize that and that meet human rights standards. 

Involvement in climate change and human rights is important because what we don’t see in Scotland is the effect on vulnerable communities abroad who perhaps don’t have industrial societies; don’t create so many emissions but are directly affected by the climate impact - so flooding, fires etc. So it’s important for Scotland to have a part in the international discussion that’s going on in relation to the impact of climate change on human beings around the planet. 

There are examples of good human rights practice going on around Scotland that the Commission can share internationally. One example is the Homelessness Scotland Act which guarantees everyone the right to a home by 2012 and that’s something that we took recently to the Economic, Social and Cultural Committee Review at the United Nations in Geneva and they were quite interested in that proposal and that’s an example of something that other countries can follow from Scotland.